and political rights." end quote. the cuban government should release all political prisoners. the cuban government should also release allen gross, the american who has been jailed for more than three years now for distributing telephones in cuba. as i understand it, he is in poor health and a humanitarian parole is more than justified. when we hear about the cuban government's policies toward its people, the repression of their basic freedoms, the persecution of political dissidents, it's understandable to want to punish the government and to weaken it so that it collapses. we have to ask ourselves if our goal is to punish the cuban government or instead to help the cuban people. our goal should be to help the cuban people. further, we have to ask ourselves whether continuing the embargo will accomplish that goal. in my view, the answer is clearly no. it defies belief and 50 years of historical evidence to think that continuing the embargo will result in the toppling of the castro regime. that regime has